This invention relates to cleaning blades and more particularly to a cleaning blade with at least one heater.
Spherical toner offers many run cost and image quality improvements over conventional toner. However, the spherical particles are more difficult to clean with blade cleaning systems. Cleaning is typically easy to accomplish in warm outside environments but is much more difficult in cold conditions (Japanese C-zone). It is believed that many of the difficulties cleaning at lower temperatures are due to the cleaning blades becoming stiffer in the cold. A related problem is that of photoreceptor scratches, which are believed to be caused in the blade-photoreceptor nip. Some evidence suggests that increasing the nip pressure to improve cleaning worsens the scratch rate. It is also known that photoreceptor scratches are produced much more quickly at lower temperatures. Both photoreceptor cleaning and scratches are stressed by the cold conditions of C-zone.